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ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND AND OTHER STORIES
Emmie had a little scene with her father next day.
‘You don’t mean what you said to our Matilda yesterday, do
you, father?’ she asked aggressively.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘What, that you’ll alter your will?’
‘Yes.’
‘You won’t,’ said his angry daughter.
But he looked at her with a malevolent little smile.
‘Annie!’ he shouted. ‘Annie!’
He had still power to make his voice carry. The servant
maid came in from the kitchen.
‘Put your things on, and go down to Whittle’s offi ce, and
say I want to see Mr. Whittle as soon as he can, and will he
bring a will-form.’
The sick man lay back a little – he could not lie down. His
daughter sat as if she had been struck. Then she left the room.
Hadrian was pottering about in the garden. She went
straight down to him.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘You’d better get off. You’d better take your
things and go from here, quick.’
Hadrian looked slowly at the infuriated girl.
‘Who says so?’ he asked.
‘We say so – get off, you’ve done enough mischief and damage.’
‘Does Uncle say so?’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘I’ll go and ask him.’
But like a fury Emmie barred his way.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
‘No, you needn’t. You needn’t ask him nothing at all. We
don’t want you, so you can go.’
‘Uncle’s boss here.’
‘A man that’s dying, and you crawling round and working
on him for his money! – you’re not fi t to live.’
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Who says I’m working for his money?’
‘I say. But my father told our Matilda, and she knows what
you are. She knows what you’re after. So you might as well
clear out, for all you’ll get – guttersnipe!’
He turned his back on her, to think. It had not occurred
to him that they would think he was after the money. He did
want the money – badly. He badly wanted to be an employer
himself, not one of the employed. But he knew, in his subtle,
calculating way, that it was not for money he wanted Matilda.
He wanted both the money and Matilda. But he told himself
the two desires were separate, not one. He could not do with
Matilda, without the money. But he did not want her for the
money.
When he got this clear in his mind, he sought for an opportunity to tell it her, lurking and watching. But she avoided
him. In the evening the lawyer came. Mr. Rockley seemed to
have a new access of strength – a will was drawn up, making the previous arrangements wholly conditional. The old
will held good, if Matilda would consent to marry Hadrian. If
she refused then at the end of six months the whole property
passed to Hadrian.
Mr. Rockley told this to the young man, with malevolent
satisfaction. He seemed to have a strange desire, quite unrea-
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ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND AND OTHER STORIES
sonable, for revenge upon the women who had surrounded
him for so long, and served him so carefully.
‘Tell her in front of me,’ said Hadrian.
So Mr. Rockley sent for his daughters.
At last they came, pale, mute, stubborn. Matilda seemed to
have retired far off, Emmie seemed like a fi ghter ready to fi ght
to the death. The sick man reclined on the bed, his eyes bright,
his puffed hand trembling. But his face had again some of its
old, bright handsomeness. Hadrian sat quiet, a little aside: the
indomitable, dangerous charity boy.
‘There’s the will,’ said their father, pointing them to the
paper.
The two women sat mute and immovable, they took no notice.
‘Either you marry Hadrian, or he has everything,’ said the
father with satisfaction.
‘Then let him have everything,’ said Matilda boldly.
‘He’s not! He’s not!’ cried Emmie fi ercely. ‘He’s not going to
have it. The guttersnipe!’
An amused look came on her father’s face.
‘You hear that, Hadrian,’ he said.
‘I didn’t offer to marry Cousin Matilda for the money,’ said
Hadrian, fl ushing and moving on his seat.
Matilda looked at him slowly, with her dark-blue, drugged
eyes. He seemed a strange little monster to her.
‘Why, you liar, you know you did,’ cried Emmie.
The sick man laughed. Matilda continued to gaze strangely
at the young man.
‘She knows I didn’t,’ said Hadrian.
153
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
He too had his courage, as a rat has indomitable courage
in the end. Hadrian had some of the neatness, the reserve, the
underground quality of the rat. But he had perhaps the ultimate courage, the most unquenchable courage of all.
Emmie looked at her sister.
‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘Matilda – don’t bother. Let him have
everything, we can look after ourselves.’
‘I know he’ll take everything,’ said Matilda, abstractedly.
Hadrian did not answer. He knew in fact that if Matilda refused him he would take everything, and go off with it.
‘A clever little mannie –!’ said Emmie, with a jeering grimace.
The father laughed noiselessly to himself. But he was tired. ...
‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Go on, let me be quiet.’
Emmie turned and looked at him.
‘You deserve what you’ve got,’ she said to her father bluntly.
‘Go on,’ he answered mildly. ‘Go on.’
Another night passed – a night nurse sat up with Mr. Rockley. Another day came. Hadrian was there as ever, in his woollen jersey and coarse khakI trousers and bare neck. Matilda went about, frail and distant, Emmie black-browed in spite
of her blondness. They were all quiet, for they did not intend
the mystifi ed servant to learn anything.
Mr. Rockley had very bad attacks of pain, he could not
breathe. The end seemed near. They all went about quiet and
stoical, all unyielding. Hadrian pondered within himself. If he
did not marry Matilda he would go to Canada with twenty
thousand pounds. This was itself a very satisfactory prospect.
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ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND AND OTHER STORIES
If Matilda consented he would have nothing – she would
have her own money.
Emmie was the one to act. She went off in search of the
solicitor and brought him with her. There was an interview,
and Whittle tried to frighten the youth into withdrawal – but
without avail. The clergyman and relatives were summoned –
but Hadrian stared at them and took no notice. It made him
angry, however.
He wanted to catch Matilda alone. Many days went by, and
he was not successful: she avoided him. At last, lurking, he surprised her one day as she came to pick gooseberries, and he cut
off her retreat. He came to the point at once.
‘You don’t want me, then?’ he said, in his subtle, insinuating voice.
‘I don’t want to speak to you,’ she said, averting her face.
‘You put your hand on me, though,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t
have done that, and then I should never have thought of it.
You shouldn’t have touched me.’
‘If you were anything decent, you’d know that was a mistake, and forget it,’ she said.
‘I know it was a mistake – but I shan’t forget it. If you wake
a man up, he can’t go to sleep again because he’s told to.’
‘If you had any decent feeling in you, you’d have gone
away,’ she replied.
‘I didn’t want to,’ he replied.
She looked away into the distance. At last she asked:
‘What do you persecute me for, if it isn’t for the money.
I’m old enough to be your mother. In a way I’ve been your
mother.’
155
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘You’ve been no mother to me. Let
us marry and go out to Canada – you might as well – you’ve
touched me.’
She was white and trembling. Suddenly she fl ushed with
anger.
‘It’s so indecent,’ she said.
‘How?’ he retorted. ‘You touched me.’
But she walked away from him. She felt as if he had trapped
her. He was angry and depressed, he felt again despised.
That same evening she went into her father’s room.
‘Yes,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’ll marry him.’
Her father looked up at her. He was in pain, and very ill.
‘You like him now, do you?’ he said, with a faint smile.
She looked down into his face, and saw death not far off.
She turned and went coldly out of the room.
The solicitor was sent for, preparations were hastily made.
In all the interval Matilda did not speak to Hadrian, never
answered him if he addressed her. He approached her in the
morning.
‘You’ve come round to it, then?’ he said, giving her a pleasant look from his twinkling, almost kindly eyes. She looked
down at him and turned aside. She looked down on him both
literally and fi guratively. Still he persisted, and triumphed.
Emmie raved and wept, the secret fl ew abroad. But Matilda was silent and unmoved, Hadrian was quiet and satisfi ed,
and nipped with fear also. But he held out against his fear. Mr.
Rockley was very ill, but unchanged.
On the third day the marriage took place. Matilda and
Hadrian drove straight home from the registrar, and went
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ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND AND OTHER STORIES
straight into the room of the dying man. His face lit up with
a clear twinkling smile.
‘Hadrian – you’ve got her?’ he said, a little hoarsely.
‘Yes,’ said Hadrian, who was pale round the gills.
‘Ay, my lad, I’m glad you’re mine,’ replied the dying man.
Then he turned his eyes closely on Matilda.
‘Let’s look at you, Matilda,’ he said. Then his voice went
strange and unrecognizable. ‘Kiss me,’ he said.
She stooped and kissed him. She had never kissed him before, not since she was a tiny child. But she was quiet, very still.
‘Kiss him,’ the dying man said.
Obediently, Matilda put forward her mouth and kissed the
young husband.
‘That’s right! That’s right!’ murmured the dying man.
SAMSON AND DELILAH
A man got down from the motor-omnibus that runs from
Penzance to St Just-inPenwith, and turned northwards, uphill
towards the Polestar. It was only half past six, but already the
stars were out, a cold little wind was blowing from the sea, and
the crystalline, three-pulse fl ash of the lighthouse below the
cliffs beat rhythmically in the fi rst darkness.
The man was alone. He went his way unhesitating, but
looked from side to side with cautious curiosity. Tall, ruined
power-houses of tin-mines loomed in the darkness from time
to time, like remnants of some by-gone civilization. The lights
of many miners’ cottages scattered on the hilly darkness twinkled desolate in their disorder, yet twinkled with the lonely
homeliness of the Celtic night.
He tramped steadily on, always watchful with curiosity.
He was a tall, well-built man, apparently in the prime of life.
His shoulders were square and rather stiff, he leaned forwards
a little as he went, from the hips, like a man who must stoop to
lower his height. But he did not stoop his shoulders: he bent
his straight back from the hips.
Now and again short, stump, thick-legged fi gures of Cornish miners passed him, and he invariably gave them goodnight, as if to insist that he was on his own ground. He spoke
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ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND AND OTHER STORIES
with the west-Cornish intonation. And as he went along the
dreary road, looking now at the lights of the dwellings on
land, now at the lights away to sea, vessels veering round in
sight of the Longships Lighthouse, the whole of the Atlantic Ocean in darkness and space between him and America,
he seemed a little excited and pleased with himself, watchful,
thrilled, veering along in a sense of mastery and of power in
confl ict.
The houses began to close on the road, he was entering the
straggling, formless, desolate mining village, that he knew of
old. On the left was a little space set back from the road, and
cosy lights of an inn. There it was. He peered up at the sign:
‘The Tinners’ Rest’. But he could not make out the name of the
proprietor. He listened. There was excited talking and laughing, a woman’s voice laughing shrilly among the men’s.
Stooping a little, he entered the warmly-lit bar. The lamp
was burning, a buxom woman rose from the white-scrubbed
deal table where the black and white and red cards were scattered, and several men, miners, lifted their faces from the
game.
The stranger went to the counter, averting his face. His cap
was pulled down over his brow.
‘Good-evening!’ said the landlady, in her rather ingratiating voice.
‘Good-evening. A glass of ale.’
‘A glass of ale,’ repeated the landlady suavely. ‘Cold night –
but bright.’
‘Yes,’ the man assented, laconically. Then he added, when
nobody expected him to say any more: ‘Seasonable weather.’
159
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
‘Quite seasonable, quite,’ said the landlady. ‘Thank you.’
The man lifted his glass straight to his lips, and emptied it.
He put it down again on the zinc counter with a click.
‘Let’s have another,’ he said.
The woman drew the beer, and the man went away with
his glass to the second table, near the fi re. The woman, after
a moment’s hesitation, took her seat again at the table with the
card-players. She had noticed the man: a big fi ne fellow, well
dressed, a stranger.
But he spoke with that Cornish-Yankee accent she accepted as the natural twang among the miners.
The stranger put his foot on the fender and looked into the
fi re. He was handsome, well coloured, with well-drawn Cornish
eyebrows, and the usual dark, bright, mindless Cornish eyes. He
seemed abstracted in thought. Then he watched the card-party.
The woman was buxom and healthy, with dark hair and
small, quick brown eyes. She was bursting with life and vigour,
the energy she threw into the game of cards excited all the
men, they shouted, and laughed, and the woman held her
breast, shrieking with laughter.
‘Oh, my, it’ll be the death o’ me,’ she panted. ‘Now, come on,
Mr. Trevorrow, play fair. Play fair, I say, or I s’ll put the cards
down.’
‘Play fair! Why who’s played unfair?’ ejaculated Mr. Trevorrow. ‘Do you mean t’accuse me, as I haven’t played fair, Mrs.
Nankervis?’
‘I do. I say it, and I mean it. Haven’t you got the queen of
spades? Now, come on, no dodging round me. I know you’ve
got that queen, as well as I know my name’s Alice.’
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